A green comet that was last seen near Earth tens of thousands of years ago will be making its closest pass to the planet now.
The E3 comet - also known as C/2022 E3 (ZTF) - is not just a rare event, it is a marvel that was last spotted when Neanderthals still wandered the planet 50,000 years ago.
The green comet is now set to roam within 26 million miles of Earth on February 1, through a region of the North Pole's sky, near the star Polaris, as reported by the Daily Record.
However, people in the Northern Hemisphere can spot it now under proper viewing conditions such as binoculars or telescopes, per The Independent.
Astronomers have been following the E3 comet - which features a blue-green coma and a golden tail - since March last year when it was first discovered after they conducted a wide-field sky survey at the Zwicky Transient Facility in California, according to Euronews.
The E3 comet has since been photographed by astronomers at Nasa who shared a statement, obtained by the outlet, that read: "This comet isn’t expected to be quite the spectacle that Comet Neowise was back in 2020, but it’s still an awesome opportunity to make a personal connection with an icy visitor from the distant outer Solar System."
The spectacle got its name for being the third comet found in the fifth fortnight of the year. Space experts have urged anyone wishing to see it to pick a dark place free of ambient light and allow 30 minutes for their eyesight to adjust.
In addition to this, specialist smartphone apps and websites such as Star Chart, Sky Safari, and SkyView can be utilized to decide the comet's position in the sky.
"Comets are intrinsically highly unpredictable objects since their brightness depends on the scattering of sunlight from dust particles in the comet’s coma and tail," the comet-tracking website In-The-Sky noted.
"This dust is continually streaming away from the comet’s nucleus, and its density at any particular time is governed by the rate of sublimation of the ice in the comet’s nucleus, as it is heated by the sun's rays," they continued.
"It also depends on the amount of dust that is mixed in with that ice. This is very difficult to predict in advance, and can be highly variable even between successive apparitions of the same comet," the website added.
The publication revealed that the most appropriate time to see the green comet is in the early morning, just before dawn. And, at the start of February, people should be able to see with the naked eye.